Create a Flip Book!

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Trick your eye with this funky flip book project! If you've ever wondered how animators get your favorite cartoons to look like they're moving (even though they're just drawings) this is the activity you've been waiting for. You can easily create your own hand held animation by making a flip book, a book with different pictures on each page so when you flip through them they look like they're moving! It's fun, easy, creative... and even teaches a little about science!

What You Need:

Small notepad or pad of post-its (it helps if the paper is thin enough to allow you to see the previous drawing)

Pencil

Patience and imagination

What You Do:

Brainstorm about what to draw. Keep it simple! A bouncing ball, moving butterfly, or a stick figure waving or skipping rope are all fun and easy to do.

Open the notepad to the last page, and draw the first picture there. You may want to start with the object on the right edge, only partly showing like it's peeking through or moving into the "frame."

From there, work your way "up" by turning to the next sheet (the second from the bottom). Draw the next picture slightly different than the first, as if you were watching it move in slow motion.

Continue with a slightly different image moving slowly across each page until you've finished the flip book.

Now, flip the book from back-to-front and watch the action! When single drawings are flipped quickly, the eyes can't keep up so even though you're not looking at the drawing anymore, the eye projects the image onto the brain for a moment longer. This experience is called persistence of vision, and it's why your flip book drawings look like they're moving!